


Lightning Flash(backs)

by AlyssiaInWonderland



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Flashbacks, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Phobias, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sokka helps him, Thunder and Lightning, Tumblr Prompt, Zuko experiences a storm and it gives him flashbacks to his family shooting him with lightning, basically me taking out my angst feels on poor Zuko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-22 07:37:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21298010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlyssiaInWonderland/pseuds/AlyssiaInWonderland
Summary: At the Western Air Temple, waiting for the time to defeat the Fatherlord, there is an intense lightning storm. Zuko experiences flashbacks, but gets help and comfort from an unlikely source; Sokka. Written for the tumblr prompt below.Zuko angst prompt: Certainly has been done a lot of times, but Zuko being phobic of thunderstorms because the lighting triggers him, it just give me so much feels (i am talking panic attacks, hallucinations,… very big trauma)
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Ozai & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 1119





	Lightning Flash(backs)

The rain gathered into veils in the darkness outside; moonlight sparkling off the sheets of water and slamming into the sides of the Western Air Temple. The torrent surged wildly, as if pulled by the moon as it glinted in the gaps between the clouds. The water bounced up from its own surface on the outer edges of the temple floors, sloped down fractionally to keep the uncovered areas clear of pooling water, but gravity was almost losing the fight with the driving wind howling directly into the cliff face. The water was torn between two masters, ebbed and flowed; tidal.

Thunder crashed through the gloom, reverberating through the courtyards and winding into every sheltered nook. The temple trembled with the strength of it.

So did Zuko.

The lightning flashes garishly across the sky; tearing the air apart and leaving him breathless.

Each strike lit up the entire stone structure, unnatural snapshots of bright colour in the midst of the storm. Zuko could see the green of the creeping vines and the red of his clothes in the cracks of it, yellow dots of flowers clinging to the cliff-face embedded as after-images in his vision.

He only realised he had moved out of the shelter when he noticed how his hair stuck to his face, plastered to him like he was a kitten-rat cast into a river to drown.

He was shivering in the cold. Firebenders did not draw their warmth well in the rain and night.

Lightning crackles across the valley and the thunder wells up behind it, the sound growing and growing until Zuko thought his head might split from it. His shaking hands flew to the sides of his head, as if he could hold his fracturing skull together.

Another wave of rain and lightning pummeled him, hard, and he staggered back, his boots slippery under him on the slick stone.

There, in the vibrancy of the lightning - a swirl of movement, of red cloth and vicious, vivid golden eyes.

Azula.

He lashed out, the wild flames doused almost instantly by the rush of rain. In the ringing darkness, the aftermath, she was gone.

He lowered his hands, breathing hard like he had just finished training his katas. He grappled for control.

_Fire comes from the breath, Zuko._

He took a gulp of air, rain trickling down his face and seeping, salty, past his lips.

He wasn’t crying. He would have noticed such a lapse in decorum.

The next strike illuminated the sky so brightly it seemed to be day. Zuko could see everything so clearly; each fine crack in the stone ruins, every rich grey cloud in stark display. The streams of lightning trailed through the air, spreading and sparking eagerly for their path, seeking the most direct course to the ground. It passed so close Zuko could smell the ozone charge in the air; taste metal and see the shadow of it’s line streaking a vividly red-black line over his already half-broken eyesight.

In the scraps of vision he had left, he saw a hand, flames coming at his face, and he flinched back, falling to the ground. He felt the icy water soak into his robes, and welcomed the feeling as proof that he was not burning.

He looked up at the sky, up at the storm, and felt it’s dizzying scale. He couldn’t fight something this big, this powerful; he was a penitent on his knees, eclipsed by it’s magnificent scale. A son begging for forgiveness and recieving -

_The blue fire, from Father’s hand to his heart, like every word and every beating was manifest in this bright spike of intense heat. The shock of it meeting his fingertips, drawing into his centre and rioting against his fragile control like a live thing, a creature seeking only to destroy, to blindly reach for it’s desires, oblivious to the destruction left in it’s wake. Surging through him, singeing him from the inside-out as he felt it’s push and pulling it away from his core, like the roll of ocean waves as the peak broke and split out of his hand, turning the strike back onto itself and rending the throne dias into crumbling ashes._

Zuko’s scream was swallowed by the thunder.

And the rain stopped.

And he kept on screaming.

Hands gripping his too-short traitor-hair, waterlogged and reduced to cowering against the elements, against an aspect of the element he was supposed to be able to wield with cold and deadly precision. Worthless, like his father told him and his Uncle must know by now, after his double treachery.

His screams quieted, becoming incoherent whimpers of pain as he thought of his Uncle, of his only true family, gone because he had been to foolish, too cruel to see what he had had, once, as a banished Prince. So desperate to prove himself and get Ozai’s promised love, when he was already loved more than he knew and cast it aside callously with every sharp word to Iroh, Dragon of the West. The man who had saved him, in every possible way.

The hand on his shoulder was shockingly warm.

“Zuko, you have to come inside!”

Zuko blinked at Sokka past the rain interrupting him, past the tears making his face swim blurrily.

“Follow me!”

Zuko let himself be half-dragged by Sokka, his voice finally muted as he let someone else take control.

It was quieter inside the temple walls. Sokka tugged him to the campfire, where everyone else was resting, still asleep. The world felt oddly distant, like he was viewing it backwards through the lenses his captain once used to spot other ships flag colours.

“You’re soaking wet! If anyone should be out in this chaos it should be Katara. She’d love this, if she wasn’t such a heavy sleeper.” Sokka snickered. “She snores.” He confided, like it was possible to hear her in this maelstrom.

Zuko blinked at Sokka, and opened his mouth to say words.

Nothing came out.

“The cold really did a number on you, buddy.” Sokka tugged Zuko past the sleeping forms, careful not to tread on Momo’s tail or trip over Hakoda’s boots - one had tipped over and was steadily soaking up water. If Zuko had left his boots so clumsily laid -

Lightning flashed again and Zuko let out an involuntary cry, smothering it immediately, horrified, with his own palm. He looked at Sokka, his eyes wide, and met Sokka’s worried but steady blue.

“Come on.” Sokka spoke gently, coaxing, and he would have resented it if he had the energy. Instead he followed the kind young man who should hate him but busted them both out of prison and made terrible jokes, because if he wasn’t safe with him then he was safe with no-one.

Eventually they reached a room, far back in the temple, deep enough into the cliff that Sokka had to use a torch to light the way.

He tucked the torch into a bracket on the wall of a small room, setting it with a warm glow. Sokka dropped his hoard of blankets, and then turned to Zuko.

“Can you get yourself out of those things?” He held up an over-large blue shift. “At least this is dry.”

Zuko stared, and then realised that the thunder he was waiting for wasn’t coming.

He took the cloth, and then paused, confused. No; he needed to remove his clothes before putting on the new one. So many steps, so many limbs to feel and control. He concentrated on his breath, feeling the curl of golden fire inside his chi; soothing as the rising sun.

“‘Woah, easy there!” Sokka pulled the shift out of Zuko’s lax grip and touched his hands, tentatively. “Breathing fire is pretty neat, but you still need to get into something dry.”

Zuko nodded, warmth slowly seeping back into his muscles. He fumbled with his robes, and gratefully accepted the efficient, business-like help Sokka gave him with the fastenings. His hands were still shaking, even with the warmth in his breath.

The second time Zuko picked up the shift, he was able to pull it over his head. He felt rather than heard the warm rush of Sokka’s sigh of relief. 

“Think you can sleep?” Sokka sat with his back to the wall by the roll mat and blankets.

Zuko moved to the makeshift bed, and froze, uncertain. There were pathways in his head, he knew, that mapped to him lying down, but his body had forgotten how. He felt the fire in his breath fade, as his thoughts grew faster and shadows encroached on him like ravenous claws.

A hand on his squeezed softly, but persistent enough to be grounding. He found the fire in his breath again, and let Sokka guide him to the floor.

He clumsily gathered the blankets around himself, and ended up with his head nudged up against the outside of Sokka’s thigh, but Sokka seemed content, and his hand was still resting on Zuko’s, and his eyelids were heavy.

The last thing he saw before he slept was Sokka’s profile, watchful, softened by the flickering torchlight.

The rest of his sleep was dreamless and deep.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi my darlin's! So this is my attempt at some angsty Zukka. Idk, I just really love this pairing and I adore Zuko a heck of a lot! I hope this did them justice. <3
> 
> As ever, comments and kudos feed my dark, validation craving soul!


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